Teams assess flood damage west of Loveland

Allen Turner, left, and John Ormsby, Federal Emergency Management Agency employees, walk around a home that was torn apart by floodwaters on Hummingbird Lane west of Loveland while assessing flood damage Wednesday in the area with Larimer County building inspectors.
(
Jenny Sparks
)

LOVELAND -- Almost six weeks after the Big Thompson River ran wild through Loveland, the weight of the disaster still sits heavy on properties west of town.

Two riverside homes on Hummingbird Lane across from Sylvan Dale Ranch remain buried up to their roofs in sand, and the neighborhood is almost unrecognizable in places.

On Wednesday, building inspectors from Larimer County joined teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the rural road as they began assessing flood damage to homes and businesses.

The four teams will visit the buildings in Larimer County that were damaged by the September flooding, according to Eric Tracy, an engineer with the county and its flood plain administrator.

Their mission is to collect information on the damage to the buildings. That data will go into a FEMA computer program that will help determine if a structure meets the federal definition of "substantially damaged."

'Substantially Damaged'

If a property owner would have to spend more than 50 percent of a building's preflood market value on repairs, the building is substantially damaged, Tracy said.

"It could mean they can't rebuild," he said.

Because of staffing limitations, the county asked for FEMA's help to gather the data.

About 270 buildings were red-tagged or yellow-tagged by Larimer County building inspectors after the flood, meaning they either were unsafe to enter for any reason, or entry was limited, Tracy said.

Chief county building official Eric Fried said his department doesn't need FEMA's assistance inspecting buildings that were destroyed or suffered just minor water damage.

"It's the ones in the middle that we need their help with," Fried said.

Depending on where a building sits in the flood plain and how severely damaged it was, county officials might determine that it can't be rebuilt, Tracy said.

He said FEMA provides the flood zone maps, and he doesn't know yet whether the federal agency will redraw them based on this flood.

A welcome sign hangs on a home Wednesday on Hummingbird Lane that is filled nearly to the roof with silt and mud from the flood west of Loveland.
(
Jenny Sparks
)

"There's a lot of question marks still," added Fried.

Buried in the Sand

The FEMA workers used worksheets to record damage to the buildings they assessed Wednesday morning on Hummingbird Lane and at Sylvan Dale Ranch across County Road 31D.

The sheets require the inspectors to note elements such as foundation, roof covering, exterior finish and quality of construction - not easy to do in the case of the two buried houses on Hummingbird.

They also have to estimate the percentage of the exterior, interior, doors and windows, cabinets and countertops, plumbing and other features damaged by the flood.

Standing outside a house with sand mounded up to the roof, FEMA flood plain management specialist Greg Coulson explained that his job is to collect data and not draw any conclusions.

"We'll turn that data over to them (county officials), and they'll make that determination based on their criteria," said Coulson, a FEMA reservist from North Carolina who spent 81/2 months in New York after Superstorm Sandy.

The teams will spread out across the county over the next three or four days, Fried said, and then likely redeploy in the Estes Park area.

And, he added, "There are parts of the county that aren't accessible yet."

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